Lily White

by Susan Isaacs

  “You wouldn’t have to,” I said. “I’d give you a discount.”

  Mary laughed. “A big fat one, I hope!”

  “A big fat one.”

  I drove to my office to check my mail and returned to Mary’s an hour later. She was gone. I never heard from her again.

  When I think about the case and I’m in an upbeat mood, I imagine Mary on some Amtrak train out of New York, sitting next to a nice guy in a suit who knows she’s not the kind of girl Mama wants him to bring home, but nonetheless, he’s going to bring her home. I see her in a pretty house with a central vacuum system, pregnant, clipping coupons for Wisk and Just Right. When I’m feeling low, I see her punched in the face, kicked in the head by some drunken pig of a john who grabs back the fifty bucks he gave her.

  And now and then, late at night, I think she knew all along where Norman was, and they are together again.

  Twenty-six

  Of course, the Torkelson case wasn’t even the half of it. To finish Lily White’s story, it is necessary to backtrack a few years, before Lee met Norman in the visitors room at the Nassau County Correctional center, even before Mary Dean met Norman when she was working the bar at the Paloverde Cocktail Lounge in the Maricopa Motor Inn in Phoenix. We have to return to the early spring of 1991, shortly after Lee’s forty-first birthday.

  Sandi Zimmerman slid into Lee’s office and closed the door. She kept her hands behind her on the knob and narrowed her eyes in the furtive manner of minor characters in Humphrey Bogart vehicles. “There’s a man outside who says he’s your father,” she said. “His name is Leonard White.” Blood rushed to Lee’s head. She felt dizzy. She calmed herself: Great emotion—how could it not be? Or was this something beyond emotion? A stroke? “Is it?” she heard Sandi asking.

  “Is it what?” Lee snapped. Her skull was expanding against her scalp, desperate to escape the pressure inside her head. By the time Sandi brought her father in, she’d be aphasic, trying to make the D sound—Dad—but she wouldn’t be able to move her paralyzed tongue up behind her teeth, and the only sound that would emerge would be a feral growl.

  “Is it really your father?”

  “Sandi, you’re standing in front of a closed door. I can’t see him.” Lee realized then that Sandi was probably frightened the man was not her father at all, but a dissatisfied ex-client packing a semiautomatic rifle under his raincoat. She was irritated that everyone else got carte blanche to be crazy and she had to be the sane one. Reluctantly, she put her massive cerebral hemorrhage on hold. “If he’s a spiffy-looking man in his mid-sixties, he’s probably my father.”

  The man who came through the door was indeed her father. He did not look spiffy, however. Leonard had gone from slim to thin, but his trousers had not. They were held up by a pair of expensive suspenders—pearl-gray, with a black design. Plumes? No, bushy-tailed foxes. The suspenders held up his trousers, but he easily could have slipped both his arms inside the waistband. His hair had gone from distinguished silver at the temples to old man’s white. His face was no color at all. In the middle of her cheerful blue and white office, Leonard looked diminished and passé, a scene on a tiny fifties black-and-white TV.

  “Hello.” Lee stood behind her desk, making no move to shake hands or come around to greet him. This was not a conscious, lawyerly, ploy. Her body refused to let her move and her mind was in no condition to countermand the order.

  “Sorry to drop in on you like this,” he began. He sounded nervous, but she was relieved that his voice was still the same, a slightly raspy Brooklyn baritone, rather pleasing, but with an accent that made it sound as if there had been some game in his neighborhood in which all residents tried to speak with Oxbridge diction—and only Leonard had not gotten that it was a big joke. “I suppose I should have called first.”

  “Please sit down,” she said.

  Carefully, he lowered himself into one of the chairs that faced her desk. His thumb caressed the arm, reflexively checking out the fabric, as if considering it as a possible lining for one of his coats. “I don’t know how much Valerie’s told you,” he said.

  “About what? Look, I’m not being coy. She’s fourteen and a half, and she tends to be a little self-involved.”

  “The actor. Did she tell you I called her an ‘actress’ and got a big lecture?”

  “She doesn’t talk much about what she does when she’s with you or her father. Except if you take her to the theater, you and—” Lee realized her father was waiting to see what euphemism she would come up with for family members, so she came up with none. “—Mom or Jazz and Robin. What is it that Val might have told me about?”

  Leonard shook his head: I can’t find the words. Lee leaned forward. The swivel mechanism in her desk chair squealed. Maybe she wasn’t having a stroke, but her head did not feel right. Healthy people do not feel pressure against their temporal bones. What could Val be keeping from her? Some relationship? Sexual? Could she be pregnant? She’d had her period for a year. But she had invited only two boys—old buddies from elementary school—to her bat mitzvah: two boys and twenty-three girls. Drugs? What else could it be? Had Val broken down and confessed to her grandfather that when Lee was working late, she sneaked bottles of wine spritzers up past Puella and was one of those secret teenage alcoholics? Had Lee been overestimating a child’s ability to cope with a working mother, a retarded uncle, a Holy Roller housekeeper, a ten-year-old accordion prodigy, three dogs and two cats and a perpetually present black Republican?

  “I don’t know where to begin,” Leonard said.

  As this was what ninety percent of the clients sitting in that chair said, Lee at least knew what she had to do: ask something, anything, that would demand an answer. “How is Mom?”

  “You do know!”

  “No. What? Is something wrong?”

  “Wrong? Metastasized stomach cancer.”

  Lee hugged herself, her arms enfolding her belly. “I’m so sorry.”

  “She’s got two, three more months, the doctor says. Sloan-Kettering.”

  “She’s in the hospital?”

  “No. What can they do for her there? I have her home.”

  “Is she in pain?”

  “No.”

  “Who’s taking care of her?”

  “I’m semiretired these days. I do what I can.”

  “Is there anything I can do?”

  Leonard sat back and crossed his legs, too suave a gesture for talking about cancer. “Is there anything you can do?” he mused. “Let me give you a bit of background. I don’t know if you read the financial pages, although you must. You’re a lawyer.”

  “The financial pages?”

  “Wait. Hear me out. The fur industry is, as they say, enjoying hard times.” He gave a harsh laugh, the sort where no sound is emitted because the lips are too tightly clamped together. “Our business is not doing well. Don’t worry. I didn’t come here for a loan. I came because I felt you ought to know about your mother.”

  “I can’t believe Val didn’t say anything,” Lee said.

  “Well …”

  “Have you actually told her that her grandmother has cancer?”

  “No,” he admitted. “Not in so many words. She knows Sylvia’s been under the weather. But you don’t say ‘cancer’ to a fourteen-year-old.”

  “Yes you do.”

  “Well, we don’t. Anyway, this is the thing: about the business. What I was trying to tell you. All those anti-fur people were marching up and down in front of the salon.” He uncrossed his legs and leaned toward her. “For three years! Screaming at anyone who came in. They picked four or five targets, and we were one of them. Because of our clientele. The best and the brightest: That’s who we’ve had right from the beginning. We hired security men, but that just kept them from throwing red paint. It didn’t make the customers come in. They were afraid. Those animal people are psychos. You know about them? They throw paint on the garments!”

  “I’ve heard.” About a year earlier. W
ill had been over. As they usually did before he left, they turned on the TV for the news and the Johnny Carson monologue. The screen filled with protesters in front of a department store, screaming, cursing, hooting at fur-wearing women. Spontaneously, Will and Lee broke into applause.

  “And it’s not just the psychos. The real problem is, it’s not the eighties anymore.”

  “You were doing all right before the eighties.”

  “But all that was nothing compared to the eighties. We couldn’t get to the bank fast enough. And now … dead.” He rubbed his hands together. They made a sandpaper sound. The backs of his hands were protuberant blue veins, large brown blotches. “We had to close Le Fourreur. Valerie didn’t tell you?”

  “No. I’m sorry to hear it.”

  “Last year we did no business at all. Nothing. And this year is going to be worse. Less than nothing. All the Furhavens—the low-end stores: Our profit margins are shaved to almost nothing, and we’re not even making our rent. We’ve already closed the two in Jersey. What can I tell you? Everything is nothing.”

  “What about all the money you made in the eighties?”

  “It was tied up. Real estate. We both had co-ops in the city. Me and Jazz. Jasper.”

  She almost smiled. “I know who you mean. I didn’t know you had places in the city. Val’s not a very good gossip.”

  “I’m surprised she hadn’t said anything. She’d been to both places. They were beautiful. I was on Fifth, near the museum. Jazz was Park in the Sixties, one of the most exclusive buildings in the city. And I had the house in Palm Beach.” He looked to a wall lined with framed photographs Will had taken. “Not the house you were in,” he said to the photographs. “Another one. On the ocean. And Jazz had one close by, and one in Vermont. They’re all great skiers, the whole bunch—”

  “I don’t mean to be rude, but I’d like to know why you’re here.”

  “We sold them all, but you wouldn’t believe it. These days everybody’s trying to unload everything they bought in the eighties, when prices were sky-high. There’s a glut on the market and everything, everything we sold we sold at a loss. Terrible. The art your mother bought. We practically gave it away. Robin’s jewelry. Edwardian. It was auctioned at Sotheby’s. They wouldn’t have taken it if it wasn’t quality stuff. Everything. We poured it into the business. We hired a new designer, someone very hot. I can’t tell you what we spent on advertising and public relations. But in the end … nothing. It got so bad we had to let Greta go.”

  “I know she’s not with you anymore.”

  “Val told you?”

  “No. Greta comes to dinner every Thursday.”

  “She does? How is she?”

  “She seems all right. She’s been coming to dinner once a week for years—since Jazz switched sisters. It’s the only way she could see me and Kent.”

  “For God’s sake!” Lee could not tell if her father was angry at her remark about Jazz switching sisters or about his housekeeper’s secret life. “Greta didn’t tell you about closing the stores, or about us having to let her go?”

  “No. We never talk about you. A few months ago, she told me she retired. She never was a big talker. And she’s very proud. She wouldn’t say she was fired.”

  “Believe me, I felt bad. But she had a nest egg. They’re a very frugal people.” He shook his head wearily. “In my life, I never could be frugal. It’s not my nature. But it wasn’t bad being the other way, generous, because I knew I had to make the kind of life I wanted. It was an incentive. The better I wanted to live, the more I made.” He shook his head. “Not anymore. I had to put the house up for sale. The house you grew up in. Do you know why? Because we need money to live! It’s come to that. Every night I pray for a buyer. Jazz and Robin had to put their place up too. A showstopper. Right on the Sound. I wish you could see it.”

  Lee knew that when she repeated that line to Will she would laugh, but just then, she could not. “Why would you wish I could see it?”

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

  “Then or now?” Leonard pretended he had not heard her question. “You know, talking about then… Right after Jazz left me, I thought: It’s understandable that he would want Robin. She’s so helpless, so beautiful. She makes Jazz feel important. Useful. Manly. All I seemed to be able to do was diminish him. But now … I can see it more clearly. Once Jazz knew he had overreached, marrying me, there really was only one alternative: Robin.”

  “I don’t understand,” Leonard said warily.

  “Sure you do. He couldn’t make it as a lawyer and you gave him the perfect out: a thriving business. What a life he had with you! All he had to do was find some way to continue it without dragging me along. And he did. He found someone who hated what I had accomplished as much as he did, and together they were able to make their dreams come true: to bring me down and keep living high—off you. That’s what happened.”

  “Then I guess this news is making you happy. You’re probably thinking: This is justice. They got what they deserved. All of them.” He waited, but Lee did not say: It doesn’t make me happy, or You did not deserve to come to this. “I’ll tell you why I’m here,” Leonard said, just before the pause became unbearable. “Besides your mother. Do you want to hear?”

  “Do you want to tell me?”

  “Hart’s Hill.”

  “What about it?”

  “Fos and Ginger can’t keep it up anymore.”

  “They couldn’t keep it up twenty years ago.”

  “It’s on the market now for next to nothing. Three mil. That’s a steal.”

  “And?”

  “We’re hoping to keep it in the family.” Lee studied the thin, gray man across from her. Had he lived with his own illusions so long that he now believed he and the Taylors were one? “I know this is a long shot, but hear me out. Hart’s Hill means something. It has meaning for your daughter. It’s her heritage. She’s a Taylor.”

  “It may be part of her heritage. But the other part is a fourteen-year-old Jewish kid from Port Washington who gets ten bucks a week from me and baby-sits for the rest. Three million is a little steep for her.”

  “Lee,” her father said, moving to the very edge of his chair, putting his dry hands on her desk. There was still a shadow of grace in his movement. For just an instant, she saw the man who could hold up a rat’s skin and convince some rich matron it was better than mink. “Come on,” he urged. “How about it?”

  “How about what?”

  “How about you? Who better? Think about it: You don’t just have one Taylor, you have two living with you! Kent. He actually grew up there. And can you imagine how thrilled Valerie would be to move—”

  “I don’t have that kind of money.”

  “You don’t need as much as you think. Jazz talked the whole thing over with Fos. He’s willing to take back paper. He said he always liked you. Fos, I mean. And if it goes to a stranger … Don’t you see? It would be out of the family.”

  “I don’t care. It’s not my family. My family lives with me in Port Washington.”

  Leonard pushed himself up using the edge of her desk, but he didn’t get very far. Embarrassed, he pretended he had not tried to get up at all. “You’re a lawyer. This is a good business proposition. The next real estate upswing, you could double your money.”

  “By the time the next upswing comes around, I’ll be double my age.” He braced his hands against the arms of the chair, but he did not try to stand. “Are you all right?” she asked. “Health-wise?”

  “I’m fine.” He pushed and, finally, with a grunt, managed to get up. “Don’t close the door on this, Lee. For the sake of your child.”

  “For her sake and my sake, she’s going to have to make her own way in the world.” Leonard turned and moved to leave. Lee walked around her desk and held the door for him. “Does Mom need nurses?” He shrugged. “I’ll be glad to help you with that.”

  “That you have the money for?”

  “Y
es, for that I do. My checkbook’s at home. I’ll have an envelope messengered to you tomorrow.” Up close, just beside his mouth, she could see a small patch of white whiskers his razor had missed.

  “You know what’s interesting?” Leonard inquired.

  “What?”

  “From our room, lying in bed all day like she does: You look out the window and what’s the only thing you can see? Hart’s Hill.”

  The following day, Lee wrote a check. She took it herself to the house in which she grew up. When her father answered the door, she handed it to him, along with a list of nursing care agencies. It was four in the afternoon, and he had not yet shaved. The white whiskers near his mouth had grown, and they stuck out of his face like an on-off button. She told her father that her check would cover one week’s worth of nursing care. After that, the agency could send the bills to her: simpler bookkeeping.

  They both understood that Lee did not trust Leonard to spend thousands of dollars on a dying woman who was not in pain.

  Lee told him she wanted to see her mother. He said he would go up and see if it was okay. She waited in the front hall and looked into the living room. She was not surprised that none of the furniture was familiar. Asian, she thought. Some country that had become stylish during the eighties. Sri Lanka, maybe, or Burma. Will would know. The fieldstone floors were bare. She wondered if that had been stylish or if they had sold the rugs. Leonard came down and said: You can go up. I guess I don’t have to show you the way.

  She was seven weeks away from dying, but Sylvia looked better than her husband did. Her frosted blonde and gray hair, pinned softly on top of her head, emphasized her fine-boned face and long, thin neck. She looked like Katharine Hepburn would have looked if Katharine Hepburn’s forebears had come from a Galician shtetl. “Come in,” she summoned Lee. Asia had been carried up to the second floor. The bed was a huge four-poster of white wood, every inch carved with flowers and—Lee looked closer—animal heads. It was the only piece of furniture in the room. For some reason Lee was not sure she comprehended, the bed stood at a forty-five-degree angle in the middle of the room. “Like it?” Sylvia asked.